Channel Zero Returns!!

Friday October 3rd at 8p (sharp) in the cozy screening room of the Somerville Theatre 55 Davis Square Somerville with a screening of.... "THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND" (!929) Lionel Barrymore stars in this silent steampunk classic as Captain Nemo whose super submarine The Nautilus is hijacked by a Balkan Dictator and taken to the sunken City of Atlantis. Based on the classic novel by Jules Verne with a few sea monsters, sentient amphibians and even a girl thrown in for Good Measure! Admission: $7.50 (cheap!) Three Years in the making and unseen in Boston for Eighty Five Years!!

Death of an Ape Man...

The Jungle Girl came hanging around my window last night she lives in a vast unexplored tropical rain forest that straddles the border between Arlington and Belmont Massachusetts. Since she "Stands the Watch over the Lost Land of Spirits" she offered me a choice of obituaries...Denny Miller or Joan Rivers. Ever the scion of Republican Simplicity, I chose the late Tarzan Actor...after all, Joan Rivers had Howard Stern...but the Late Denny Miller has but me. The Jungle Girl smiled nodded and rode the vines back to her Fabled Lost City, for now, her mission was complete. *** Cuz I got a line on the guy not mentioned in any of the obits... Because let the record show that Channel Zero gathered what was likely the lastpaying audience to watch one of the Late Denny Miller's performances back in July when we screened an ep of "Mona McCluskey" as part of our "Riot Girls of the Great Society" program. And it's just ironic to note, that Miller left the basketball court at UCLA to become a screen Tarzan (in MGM's awful 1959 remake "Tarzan the Ape Man") and then spent the rest of his career goofing his own heroic image...meanwhile the original film itself languishes in complete obscurity no one seems to have it. Ah but Denny was proof positive you didn't have to be in a good Tarzan movie to Make Good, look at Lex Barker...he ended up working with Fellini. Fate was not quite so kind to Denny he had to make do with stooging it up with Peter Sellers in "The Party" (1969) among some two hundred TV appearances and stint as the "Gorton's Fisherman"...On the Other Hand, Denny never descended to the dregs of doing "The Celebrity Apprentice"...cuz frankly Trump would've been lucky to have him.

Atlas Shrugged Part III "Who is John Galt" (2014)

Who is John Galt? He is an actor named Kristoffer Polaha whose chin has the contours suggestive of Mount Washington on a clear summer's day and eyes that exude the sincerity that make or break hemorrhoid cream adverts. And that...is the Libertarian Man on Horseback. I'll probably go to my grave wondering if anyone volunteered their services and talents gratis for this the third and final chapter in the misbegotten film adaptation of the Ayn Rand novel & notorious libertarian screed. Because it would be ironic that charity that virtue derided by all true Randians was the vital component to bring Ayn Rand's Magnum Opus to the screen and so very ineptly as well. Because the god-damned thing was nothing but a fan film... a bad one at that. Rob "Northern Exposure" Morrow is allegedly in this film, as a still photo (guess the Objectivist Power Elite couldn't afford his price to walk around on camera)...and he is the most recognizable name on the roster! Which is an excellent precis of the film's problems, a no name cast fit for a freeze dried coffee commercial and a budget of some five million dollars a paltry sum ill spent. Objectivists are obsessed with a personifying a self selected self celebrating intellectual elite, the libertarian herrenvolk...but give them five million large and sure enough they made a hash of their Guru's Personal Gospel. They have no one to blame but themselves. Now,don't blame the budget, blame the resentful envious mediocrities behind this project, you give five million to Orson Welles you'll get "King Lear"...and one for the ages...but these guys attract no talent on the scale of the late "Citizen Kane" director. Hell you give five million and this very meshugginah script to Roger Corman and he'll deliver something worthwhile, that boyo knows how to make a nickel squeak and get it all up on the screen. Hell, Mussolini's Blackshirts adapted Rand's novel "We The Living" and managed to generate a prototype neorealist document...but these jobbers? Phhfft! But this sovereign irony is at the core of Objectivism, a cult of rugged individualist genius that invariably attracts tepid insecure cubicle crawlers.

Robin Williams RIP

It is funny but, my "generation voices" were less musicians and or rockers and to me at least mostly comedians, for stand up was amidst a sort of revolution when I came of age...the range of course ran from Judy Tenuta, Paula Poundstone and all the way out to a very young Jerry Seinfeld, Steve Wright and presiding over them the veritable Jester King, the Supreme Mxyztplk, was Robin Williams the Poet Laureate of Stand Up. He was the Guy they all envied, not for his success so much as his limitless store of energy, conjuration & raw chutzpah (even if he strayed into Joke Theft, a common disease of comedians, just ask Red Skelton). And it is just ineffably sad to note, that he took his own life, something that doesn't really as an altogether surprise. The man was a phenomenon and a game changer...let that be his epitaph. Let us leave OFF the tombstone the many many bad films he made, for example "Patch Adams", "Mrs Doubtfire" & "Hook" (a veritable trilogy of Mawkishness...fit to serve only as enhanced interrogation options in CIA Black Prisons all over the globe)... At the height of this cataract of sentimentality, you could check your watch at the one hour and forty five minute mark of a Robin Williams' movie for the moment when he broke down the fourth wall and addressed the film audience itself to deliver The Moral of the Story "Mork Calling Orson" style. I mean he did this in something like seven films over a span of fifteen years you'd think he'd put a stop to it, but no...Robin hectored on and on. It is important to recall that in "The Great Dictator" (1940) at the very end, Chaplin turned and addressed his audience about the horrors of totalitarianism and the ineffable possibilities of peace, he did this because he thought Civilization itself was coming to an end. Robin on the other hand routinely used a divine gift for persuasion and improvisation to extoll of merits of being nice to old people, making time for Family and the virtues of puppies...in short he deployed a Gift from the Gods to shore up shoddy manipulative scriptwriting. Well what of it? He got an Oscar for a straight dramatic performance, ("Good Will Hunting"), but likely deserved it even moreso for The Genie in "Alladin"....I mean whoever heard of a improv performance in an Animated Film?? In concert there was no one better...Hell in the interview environment there was no one better, in both respects Williams much resembles the late Peter Sellers who simply saw the most routine chat show appearance as a performance venue. If Joke Stealing and Moralizing were crimes then the careers of everyone from Charlie Chaplin to Milton Berle & beyond would come to end with a soft puff of smoke...and then where would we be? We've already lost Robin Williams let us reduce the ranks no further.

Hercules (2014)

It hasn't quite been the exercise in futility that was Last Summer's movies...we've even seen Woody Allen play a pimp of all things. One has to take grace where one can find it. Meanwhile before it skids off to basic cable, seriously get out to see Duane "The Rock" Johnson as Hercules. Surprisingly this is, short of "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" the best action movie I've seen all summer. Granted The Rock is no actor, he struggles to rise to the level of snarky insolence exuded by Bruce Willis...but cast him as Hercules in a film that treats Greek Hero's supernatural origins with charming ambiguity and the Grappler's natural talent for irony kicks in just fine. And what the hell, it's been a hangover of a summer...nothing akin to last summer's Gotterdammerung...but no great indicator of Great Things to Come Either. In short The Rock was born to play Hercules....just as Woody Allen was born to play a Pimp...if they could somehow rock it in the same film Hollywood itself might be saved...if there is anything left saving that is.

One for the Monet....

A call from far off Niftyborough New Hampshire "Ever been to the Museum of Russian Icons?" "Ahhh no I'm a non practicing catholic not a non practicing eastern orthodox..." "A shame because there is an exhibit of Soviet Era Propaganda Posters at said Museum in Clinton Ma!" "Woman please! Fire up your Curtis P-40 Warhawk and meet me there!!" (For once Rebecca Cathcart-Monet, Air Marquesa of the Granite State let me play the aggressor...whence but undergraduates we'd taken student tours of the Olde Soviet Union and had some insight into the topic at hand). *** As always Ms Cathcart Monet executed one of her perfect three point landings on Clinton's town common...swung down resplendent in a light silk summer weight organdy flight suit and flying helmet. "Tres chic!" I offered. "feckless charmer" she chided. *** Inside the iconic poster art from out the ruins of the USSR was on display: "Good Ghod...like a totalitarians they have this obsession with visually activated ideological content...four word slogans...punchy images, primary colors.." mused the aviatrix. "Well the bolsheviks started out with a largely illiterate society one that venerated painted icons, so their propaganda reflected that context." spake I. "Look at this Cosmonaut poster...the pose is quasi religious, the soyuz rocket in the background forms a defacto church spire this is an Icon By Any Other Name" jabbed Rebecca. "Well the Bolsheviks made a mistake common to intellectual ideologues, they couldn't destroy religion they simply supplanted it, it yet still kept revealed religion's drawbacks & limitations" I opined. We viewed numerous posters highlighting the "vital work" the border patrols a none too subtle celebration of the USSR's status as a closed society...and the nasty ubiquitous busts depicting Lenin's fixed scowl and Stalin's bestial smirk. "And yet...look at all this artwork depicting a equitable just Socialist Utopia...and on the same wall Mealy Mouthed PSA's denouncing drunkeness, delinquency and absenteeism...that alone tells you what the CPSU truly feared" mused the Aeronautess. "Oh Agreed...PSAs are windows to the National Soul" I rejoined. "These guys remind me so much of the Futurists...except they truly worshipped machines, steel mills, hydroelectric dams, ICBMs, jet planes, unlike the futurists who had a totemist relationship with technology...the CPSU literally celebrated the coming Homo Societicus as a kind of grinning cyborg"...concluded Ms Cathcart-Monet. "Ah yes a grinning soviet cyborg with vacuum tubes and a gasoline engine..." japed me. That one made us giggle. *** A picnic on the common, we toast our little adventure with tiny glasses of Codice a sweet fortifying Spanish wine...and with a good tail wind, Ms. Cathcart-Monet took off with a cheery wave and beat her way north. *** I Bowed and departed and made my way home via back roads seldom traveled...it suited the day.

Shamrock Dictatorship...

It occurs to me, that if George Orwell's 1984, was exclusively set in Ireland, then Winston Smith would still end up tortured and brainwashed in the bowels of the "Ministry of Love" and ultimately compelled to recant his hatred of Big Brother by O'Brien the Thought Policeman. and then, two weeks after the nominal end of the novel, Smith would come up behind O'Brien in a dark Dublin alleyway and cave in his torturer's skull with a bungstarter. Room 101 or no Room 101, torture or no torture, The Irish Always Get Even.m

Comic Stalwart Archie Andrews is Dead!

*** Well...Archie had it COMING...He Made Enemies! *** Do you suppose in the afterlife, Archie will be met by "Casper the Friendly Ghost' who will take one look and cackle "YESSSS A Friend for Casper, A FRIEND FOR ALL ETERNITY...MWAHAHAHAAA!"

"Snowpiercer" (2014)

Best action movie I've seen all summer...helps that it's a not so subtle attack on Ayn Rand's whole cult of the iconoclastic super engineer (played by Ed Harris as usual). In a frozen world, the last of humanity careen across the Earth's surface on a luxury supertrain stuffed with an indolent overclass riding up front and a motley collection of proletarians living in poverty in the tail. Well Chris Evans ain't having none of that, and thus mayhem ensues. Its a film that is "about something", which is rare for a summer release of almost any kind...although my particular takeaway is that engineers if they have talent enough will quickly adapt to almost any hierarchy no matter how exploitive...and if they can't adapt...they'll create one. In short the very essence of Objectivism.... But what the hell, any adaptation of a French Graphic Novel directed by a rising South Korean Talent starring an Avenger (Chris Evans), Gaius Caligula (John Hurt) and Ed Harris in full demigod mode...is aces high with me.

Many Thanks to our Channel Zero audience on Friday Night.....

It was large, it was appreciative, it even laughed un-ironically (well here and there at least), it ran the gamut from pensioners to brainy collegians, in short to us the nigh perfect gathering. I Mean, Who Knew The Late Phyllis Diller still had such drawing power?? Channel Zero though, will return on Friday October 3rd at 8pm sharp in the Somerville Theatre's micro-cinema with an epic screening of that long lost semi-silent classic "The Mysterious Island" (1929) starring Lionel Barrymore, Lloyd Hughes & Jane Daly. Pass the word along to any steampunks you may know....

Channel Zero Proudly Presents "Riot Girls of the Great Society" - Friday July 11th at 8pm

(A Celebration of Four Deliciously Obscure Female Centric Sitcoms of the 1960's!) Out of our Fabled Channel Zero Archives we will be screening: "Occasional Wife (1966)", in which rising young ad man Michael Callan hires local artist Patricia Harty to pretend to be his wife as his employer prefers hiring Family Men! "The Pruitts of Southampton" (1966) starring Phyllis Diller as a busted heiress desperate to keep up appearances. "Mona McCluskey"(1965) Featuring Juliet Prowse as a fabulously wealthy and successful actress who marries a USAF Staff Sergeant played by former screen Tarzan, Denny Miller. "Ugliest Girl in Town"(1968) A sitcom concept so weird, we decline humbly to attempt mere summery, suffice to say the "High Concept" is, Swinging London's Top Model Is A Man Bay-bee!! Why Screen Such Dog-Eared Obscurities? Because we can't complete with Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, the X-Men and those meshugginah Transformers thats why! So yes were are counter-programming (frankly we are counter programming like crazy!)....but we are also mapping changes to the sitcom landscape, taking a moment to review the mythically comical female in American Sitcoms...and reviewing just how convoluted & fantasy driven plotlines could be in a storytelling landscape rigidly controlled by Network "Standards and Practices" departments. The Somerville Theatre (micro cinema) 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma Friday July 11th, 2014 Admission $7.50 (still the cheapest ticket in the Hub) Tickets on sale the night of the show in front of the Micro-Cinema. Tell Your Friends, Channel Zero is Back and Giving No Quarter!

A Note of Apology and a Cameo....

About two weeks ago, my email was spoofed by some vandals who bombarded all my contacts with begging appeals with respect to a phantom sister who needed $$ for a kidney transplant in Portugal of all places. All too predictable and painful, I took the usual precautions and of course discovered that all my Channel Zero related folders had been maliciously deleted. Most of said Channel Zero related contacts can be reconstituted, however feel free to drop us a little note if you wanna stay on the aforementioned mailing list. It goes without saying that we here at Channel Zero are awfully sorry for any worry, angst and or confusion we have caused...but after twenty years in this business, you have to expect these types of setbacks. Again, apologies. *** Meanwhile, on a happier note, Channel Zero with it's reliance on flyers as it's main means of advertisement, made a defacto cameo appearance in Seth Rogen's latest comedy "Neighbors". It seems Rogen and his wife wanna force the College Fraternity next door to move and use a flyer drop to force dozens of sketchy characters to crash one of their parties and force a police intervention. The frat in turn tumbles to their scheme when they find out that the crashers were cued by a distribution of paper flyers..."only OLD PEOPLE use flyers!!!" one character exclaims. HAR! Which brings me back to my original point after a fashion, we here at Channel Zero would gladly give up our reliance on endless flyer drops in favor of an on line advertising line...if we could. So far though all our efforts to migrate to a wholly internet driven advertising profile have ended in abject failure while upwards to 60% of our audience per event is still be driven to the venue by...paper flyers. When we figure out something better and cheaper, trust me you all will be the first to know!

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

Per Director Bryan Singer John Fitzgerald Kennedy was a Mutant whom Magneto was trying to save in Dealey Plaza back in 1963, however the job was bungled and the Malevolent Master of Magnetism was locked up in the bowels of the Pentagon for his pains. Meanwhile Congress neglected to Arm the Troops Properly thus losing the Viet Nam War and Richard Nixon decided to end the mutant menace by buying whole robots sight unseen from mad scientist/rising retail-king Peter Dinklage. AND THEN the time travel paradoxes kick in!! Got all that? In short, "X-Men Days of Future Past" is a loathsome mess that blackens the name of President Kennedy, perpetuates the "Stab in the Back" myth of the Viet Nam War and done the nigh impossible, made me dislike Patrick Stewart whose characterization of super telepath "Professor X" has been reduced to simpering & whispering. Honestly, I was rooting for the robots, the mutants are all self pitying hacks out to cash massive paychecks...oh and any movie script that compels the otherwise charismatic Ellen Page to point her fingers at Hugh Jackman's temples whilst grimacing and whining for two hours and eleven interminable minutes, Is A Very Badly Written Screenplay Indeed! Skip this one for the Love of Ghod!

The Cathcart-Monet Conundrum....

For once, I called it or rather she called me as I sped south on Amtrak to NYC. "Where are you" trilled the Audacious Aviatrix from Niftyboro NH. "I'm off to the Guggenheim to see the Italian Futurism exhibit!" said I brightly. "ITALIAN FUTURISM...I mean they worshipped airplanes in a crude atavistic fashion isn't that a natural fit with my own mania for classic airframes?? Whydyncha call me Jerky???" barked the peerless pilotess. Abashed I mumbled ""I thought you had a meeting of the "National Classic Airframe Association" (AKA "The NCAA perpetually untainted by Scandal"). "Canceled on poor landing conditions...Look for me on Sheep Meadown Tomorrow Morning at 9:30am EDT!!" As always to the inevitable I bowed. *** Promptly at the time declaimed, Ms Cathcart-Monet appeared over Central Park NYC, in a classic C-30 autogyro which she landed nigh daintily on the Sheep Meadow. Trained amazons from the New York Chapter of "Women's AutoGyro Co-Operative" (Ms. Cathcart-Monet is a past President of said organization)stood the watch as we toddled off to the Guggenheim. *** "Ah Futurism" sighed Rebecca. "Art is all about violence, speed & injustice" said I, paraphrasing Futurism's founder Tomasso Marinetti. "Yeah a lot of bombast there, but it was 1914 after all!" agreed the Aviatrix. "The futurists loved technology, speed and had a certain belligerence....isn't it funny that when the Italians finally generated an indigenous avant garde artistic movement so of course it is essentially militaristic, imperialistic and jingoist? More than a little misogyny thrown into the mix as well" remarked I. "Ah but Marinetti's wife was an accomplished artistic herself within the Futurist movement" countered Rebecca. "Which merely illustrates the sheer hopelessness of a misogyny as a doctrine" I jabbed. "You know they had a cookbook? A Futurist Cookbook...It was full of praise for speed, energy and violence in the kitchen...it was bitterly anti-pasta cuz this lot clearly worshipped shock value" noted the Valkyrie of the North. "Well...every jot and tittle seemed to merit a manifesto to mark the occasion..." mused myself. "I love how they put on crude multimedia extravaganzas...using NO actors, tried to bring the Futurist Style to Advertising, built concrete kiosks to market bookstores...very advanced" observed Rebecca. "And yet they were obsessed with painting and sculpture, two of the oldest art forms in the world, you'd think they'd a gotten in on the ground floor of early cinema...but no there are few Futurist Films per se" said I as well meandered up the Guggenheim's spiral imbibing Futurist paintings of battleships and increasingly their core obsession aircraft. "Futurism worshipped technology in a primitive totemistic fashion..." reflected the Peerless Pilotess. "They worshipped it, they didn't really interact with it so much..." I muttered. "Mussolini loved Marinetti" muttered Rebecca...very much the Granite State Antifascist. "Of course Marinetti and his followers glorified war and violence, speed death and destruction...there was an avant garde tailored made for the emerging Fascist Aesthetic" rumbled I in a jaunty academic tone. "These guys were insanely ambitious they wanted to read Futurist Newspapers, wear Futurist Clothes, Live in Futurist Houses and write Futurist Poetry when they weren't painting clouds of biplanes" mused the Aerial Aesthete. "Ah that Futurist Poetry...much akin to William S. Burroughs & Byron Gysion's infamous cut-ups of the beatnik era" opined I. "Good Ghod you are a walking Footnote!" smirked the Heroine. To that I made no reply...She Had Me Cold. *** Luncheon in a modest cafe...a small glass of Tokay,and then New Hampshires Peerless Propwash Princess....rose majestically into the air and with a cheery salute flew off to the New England Mists. I waved a trifle forlorn...momentarily alone in a vast Metropolis...itself a Futurist Monument.

Why Al Capp?

Why devote ninety or so minutes to his life story and works via Channel Zero? Well...lets face it, love or hate his late-in-life wingnuttery, the man was funny. Seriously taken as a whole L'il Abner is satiric cataract, hit or miss the gags, caricatures and parodies just fell from the heavens like the very biblical deluge over a twenty five year run, volume alone and dedications that entails recommends the whole enterprise. Yes Al Capp cheap shot numberless targets big and small...and had a notoriously cringeworthy confrontation with John Lennon and that whole thing with Joan Baez, Yikes! But we here at Channel Zero have always been servants of The Funny...and sometimes that hurts almost always you make enemies. Besides at the height of the anti comic book hysteria of the 1950's Capp made an impassioned attack on censorship by having the semi illiterate backwoodsman L'il Abner confess a fondness for the masterworks of Edgar Allen Poe! I mean, that alone deserves a Mark Twain American Humor Award, if they gave them out back in 1953.... Therefore Channel Zero will be screening "This is Al Capp" a classic 1970 television new documentary detailing Capp's shift from liberal to conservative from satirist to right wing provocateur with commentary from William F. Buckley, Paul Krassner and Milton Caniff among others. One of the things that made this period in Al Capp's life so very interesting, he was literally calling antiwar activists, hippies and liberals every epithet in the book and made good money at it, he was clearing mad phat money on campus from speaking fees! Literally, he was the first true "controvore", one who generates good revenue from eructating outlandishly belligerent opinions. As far as I am concerned, Howie Carr, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck all stole their act from Al Capp. Join us for: "This is Al Capp" (1970) The Somerville Theatre (micro cinema) Wednesday May 14th 8pm (sharp!) Admission $5 (cheap!) (617) 625-5700 Plus a surprise or two, you'll have to come to the show and see exactly what constitutes a surprise from Channel Zero...

Feliz Cinco De Mayo

Happy Cinco D' Mayo to one and all, lets NOT let this solemn occasion degenerate into a celebration of bloodthirsty Francophobia shall we? *** After all this is a solemn occasion, the day commemorates a rare victory by the Mexican Regulars over the Elite Imperial Guards of Louis Napoleon III in their quest recolonize Mexico and impose an Austrian Archduke as the puppet emperor of Mexico. Or put it another way, Hispanic Troops schooled a bunch of Glamorous "My Sh*t Doesn't Stink" crackers. Ah but like Saint Patrick's Day, the holiday has been fatally corrupted and compromised by U.S. distilleries and breweries sad to say it's another reason for college students to run amok. I just hope poor Maximilian isn't burned in effigy alongside Field Marshal Bazaine, I'd hate to have all this revelry occasion a diplomatic rupture with France AND Austria....

Channel Zero Returns Wednesday May 14th !

In the 1960's, Al Capp, the famed creator of the "L'il Abner" comic strip had a whole second career as a conservative firebrand and a provocateur from the right. Back at the Height of the Viet Nam War, long before Rush Limbaugh & Sean Hannity, Al Capp toured the campuses of America trashing liberals, anti-war protesters & hippies and made good money out of it! A rare television news documentary detailing Al Capp's confrontational politics & featuring commentary from William F. Buckley, Milton Caniff ,Trina Robbins & Paul Krassner. The Somerville Theatre (Micro-Cinema) 55 Davis Square Somerville Ma. Wednesday May 14th 8pm (sharp!) Admission $5.00 (cheap!) With a few "extra surprises" on tap as well... Please Note, Channel Zero is experimenting with a different screening night this time, Wednesday May 14th, after twenty years in the business and nearly fifty shows, we are entitled to change things up now and again.

Disquieting News from Plaistow New Hampshire...

that the local school superintendent has canceled a proposed production of Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd", citing concerns about the themes of murder, cannibalism and mayhem therein. Waaa-al lemme tellyuh, it is the job of a school superintendent to be concerned about stuff impacting public school students, and to anticipate concerns going forward...but shielding the innocent darlings of the Granite State from a possible dark taste for Human Flesh seems utterly ludicrous. I mean not for nothing, but cannibalism just made an appearance on the Fox TV Series Bones in the form of a ground up corpse that showed up in the cafeteria stew of a local high school! And I know that "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" had to have trafficked "long pig" centered storylines over the course of a seven year run. To say nothing of "Storage Wars" a reality television hymn of praise to cannibalism by way of the used furniture business. I can safely assure the Plaistow school superintendent that most of the above themes are things the students have seen time and again in the movies and TV to say nothing of that real-life chamber of horrors that is the internet. It is just a shame to see censorship so heavily imposed on such a fine musical...Ghod forbid tedious rubbish like "Grease" should ever come in for a dose of the same treatment.

"Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked" by Chris Matthews A Mercifully Brief Review

I think, you can literally whisper the word "bipartisanship" into Chris Matthews' ear and he will immediately smile with pavlovian expedition and make an emission in his pants. Seriously, I am not joking, the Man is Love with that very word, it evokes a Lost World full of hearty political dinosaurs of all political persuasions who somehow "stopped fighting" after six pm and became best buddies, drinking & laughing together. That, to Chris Matthews is somehow the very essence of Good Governance...It is utter nonsense but he believes it the way the Oracle of Delphi believed in the Benign Reign of Zeus the Thunderer. Which brings us to his latest book a pompous work detailing the manly bipartisan dealings between President Ronald Reagan and then US House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill in the 1980 thru 1986 period. Today's columnists tend to reflexively believe that "bipartisan solutions" are the best for The Nation as a whole and as a consequence, the Nation is Merely One Concession Away From the Eschaton. Thats an easy formulation when governance is divided between the two parties, but it also conceals the fact that from the git go one party almost always has the political edge and may agree to bipartisan solutions whilst the other usually has no choice but to negotiate. That was very much the case in 1981 thru 1986, Reagan had a few extra aces politically, a policy of engagement was the only option open to O'Neill. He'd a been much more truculent if the democrats controlled the US Senate, likewise if the Speaker's numbers were even a hair closer in the House Reagan could've have rolled him sans niceties. So this "bipartisanship" that Matthews' worships so avidly, has always been a tactical option, tied to the temporary political calculus and routinely abandoned when the winds are again favorable. It also gets trotted out in wartime and in moments of National Emergency...other than that, it is much praised and little used and for good reason, parties should only cooperate under compulsion, anything else is quite really in keeping with the true essence of democracy which is to paraphrase Rumsfeld, "messy". And it was meant to be messy by the founding fathers. Bipartisanship is NOT and never has been the natural default position of US Politics per se...and "regression to the mean" is a pretty bloody political spectacle indeed. But you can't tell that to Chris Matthews he thinks all the joshing around Reagan did with O'Neill meant something... And that is Chris Matthews' core problem he has always been a vain pompous vaguely ignorant man, very full of himself. He likes to pretend he is a liberal, if he is then he a liberal with no discernible theory of power and that makes him little more than a jobber for movement conservatism. Matthews' loved O'Neill and O'Neill's Brand of Politics back in 1982 just as he Loved George Bush Jr's Manliness in 2002 when Iraq fell...If you have No Theory of Power than almost anyone's exercise of power looks right and just and necessary.

Escape Notes (1970 Version)

Dr. Timothy Leary's Initial Escape Plan from the California Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo in 1970 apparently called for Ten Spiritually Ascendent Men to gather in a circle around the late Harvard Psychiatrist and under propitious astrological circumstances "center on cosmic consciousness". Leary would then dematerialize and appear as a plaintiff before "The Blessed One", who being moved by Leary's martyrdom, would then intervene in the physical universe to bust all and sundry out of The Slams. I offer this merely as a cautionary tale of the perils inherent on living in a universe that does not reward much in the way of purely magical thinking.